#2563 Weedeater - God Luck and Good Speed

A damn near perfect stoner metal album, sludgy and patient as shit, but with hooks to spare, each one a layered and toothsome guitar croissant. Goblin voice is a drag, but slow//fast strategy, smattered with soft interludes at the halfway and the closing, give it albumspan pacing that, while lacking the purity of, say, Dopesmoker, makes for a smoothriding listen. Plenty of landmarks on your slow decent to none-of-this, from its feats of fiery muscular striding to simmering incense meltdown monuments, all without the barest whiff of effort 4.5/5

#2562 The Yawpers - American Man

Dirtbag rockers who know how to kick in a GIANT kickin. 3 piece, but with the power of production. Every expanse of spare plucking and muttering is a setup for a tidal wave of buzz, simmering anger into fatfuck delta swagger.

The title track's satire, self-loathing first person, right? It's hard to tell patriotism from patriotic self-disgust these days. I sense that the boys are a bit of both -- who's more fit to be disgusted by this country than someone who loves it? Loving America's a fucking complicated proposition these days.

Nate Cook's rasp wears a little thin by the end, and there's not enough variety to fully keep your attention, but there's a real shitkicking rock band in there, and for the first few giant climaxes, its a thrill (bet they're rippin live 3.5/5

#2561 House of Feelings - Last Chance EP

Soooooo warrrrrm.

Where it comes up sub-LCD on the deadpan sentiments, it makes up with goosebumped synth buzz, packed with texture and analog embrace. Best around. Dancable, groovable, a little steeped in house / dancepunk leftovers, but making a mean fuckin hash from em 4/5

#2560 G&G Sindikatas - Isvien

I understood zero words of these hard-hitting Lithuanian hiphop wizards' missives. But like Odelay's legend, maybe its the cadence and sound that matters, because this shit hits hard again and again and again. The production's spiked with horns and laced with loping bass, perforated with Eminem-style syllables, guttural drags, constant rolls -- headbobbing end to end.

Ridiculously highly recommended to anyone who wants to let raw instrumental//vocal percussion take over their shit for an hour or so, language be damned* 4/5

* god I hope these guys aren't secretly like fucked up white supremacists or some shit

#2558 Philip Glass - Glassworks

With only a passing glimpse of the critical impression of Philip Glass, I know I'm wandering into well-trod territory. The intelligencia's been all through here, tamed the beasts, beat down the grasses. And I can only retrace the fact that the repetition entrances, that the imperfection becomes figure to its ground, that every thing is in its right place, that the chords rise and fall until your breath follows suit.

It's fucking perfect. It coaxes meaning from the moment of listening.

It's the kind of album that makes me lament this project, the forward passage of time - what better words might I have spilled about Dan Deacon, Beck, Basinski, Atticus Ross, to say nothing of the just-reviewed Sontag Shogun and Cornelius, a dozen others (but especially Dan Deacon, jesus).

What's the the Mint Chicks said? You're bored because you're boring.

I try to keep a finger on the scale around here, to check whether something's actually worth listening to, pretension and reputation aside. I feel like these 10-seconds-stretched-to-7-minute stemwinders could be called boring. But with only the barest inclination to dig into the details, I think you'll find ever-increasing layers of doubt, tipping over into violent disagrement with the idea that there's anything boring about any of this -- there's near-infinite details to dig into, if you have even the most basic inclination. Consider yourself encouraged to find it 4.5/5

#2557 Flash Trading - The Golden Mile

So promising, all those warm retro tones, all those sizzling hihats, all those caffinated acid fizzles. But then those vocals come in, floating disconnected from the synths and it sounds like the past and it sounds like itself. And the frontloaded melodies melt into mediocrity, and it becomes another by the numbers combinatorial exercise 2.5/5

#2556 Konx-Om-Pax - Caramel

More of this. Noisy, blasted, detuned, stretched, to what end?

Somewhere on the internet, someone found some new knobs to twist, and they turn regular sounds into alien garbage. And I've seen flashes of that coalescing into something worth hearing, but most of it's Arca-adjacent fucked-for-its-own-sake garbage. File this under the latter 2/5